Remote Access

Using tailscale or zerotier

Step 1 - Sign up for a Tailscale account

Tailscale

Tailscale signup link (Click on this link)

1. Follow the sign-up instructions

Step 2 - Install Tailscale on your laptop

Follow the installation instructions from the Tailscale website

Step 3 - Install Tailscale on you WLAN Pi

Whenever instructions reference 'a terminal window' we mean terminal from within Cockpit!

1. Bring up your terminal window

2. Install Tailscale on your WLAN Pi

   curl -fsSL https://tailscale.com/install.sh | sh

   you will be prompted to enter your password

3. Log in to start using Tailscale by running command:

   sudo tailscale up

4. Copy and paste the authentication URL into a new browser window

5. Authorise again

6. You will get the message success in your terminal window

The Tailscale client is now installed on both your laptop and your WLAN Pi! You should have local IP connectivity between your 2x devices via a Tailscale VPN tunnel.

Step 4 - Connected Devices

1. Execute the following command in your terminal window

   tailscale ?

   This will reveal all the available Tailscale commands

2. View the devices currently connected to your Tailscale 'Node'

   tailscale status

Step 5 - Test local IP connectivity

From the list of connected devices, you will see the Tailscale IP address for each device

From your WLAN Pi try to ping your laptop 'Tailscale IP address'

Alternatively you can quickly 'access' (copy to clipboard) the device IP addresses using the Tailscale client for Windows / macOS

This may not instantly strike you as an incredible!!!... right now, as you sit at the same desk as the WLAN Pi. BUT now imagine your WLAN Pi is away from you, on a customer site perhaps, with very little effort you can enable communication with it as though it were local to you.

Access somebody else's WLAN Pi via Tailscale

One potentially super useful feature of Tailscale is 'device' sharing, this will allow you to 'share' your WLAN Pi access via Tailscale with another Tailscale user.

1. On your laptop, navigate and login to Tailscale

2. Find your WLAN Pi

3. Share your WLAN Pi with your DeepDive neighbour

4. Once your neighbour has accepted the invitation, test that connectivity is possible

5. Finally, revoke your neighbour's access

Alternative VPN provider

If Tailscale is not doing it for you, we suggest giving ZeroTier a try (similar idea)

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